NCJ Number
178697
Journal
Psychiatry, Psychology and Law Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: 1999 Pages: 93-96
Date Published
1999
Length
4 pages
Annotation
Each of the items on Mak's (1993) Australian Self-Reported Delinquency Scale was judged by 13 police officers, 14 high- school teachers, 12 lawyers, and 15 psychology students to obtain their views on the seriousness of juvenile offenses.
Abstract
The findings of the survey show that community-based judgments of offense seriousness were most densely distributed around the higher, more serious end of the rating scale. For those offenses judged to be the most serious, the four groups gave similar ratings. For the offenses judged to be the least serious, there was less agreement among groups in the assigning of seriousness values. Specifically, police (and to a lesser extent, teachers) judged some status, drug, and good-order offenses to be significantly more serious than did the other groups. These findings are consistent with those of Sellin and Wolfgang (1964), who also found considerable agreement among the community groups regarding the relative ordering of crimes against the persons and property crimes that involve destruction, damage, or theft. The findings of the present study go beyond those of Sellin and Wolfgang (1964), however, in showing that the groups disagreed about the seriousness of juvenile acts or offenses that were held to be less serious. The findings that police, and in some cases, teachers regarded some of the minor delinquent acts as more serious than the other groups has important implications. Since police and teachers are the most likely groups who will deal with juvenile misbehavior, their intolerance toward even minor offenses will likely cause them to hold juveniles accountable for their behavior and thus help to prevent further offending. 1 table and 12 references